Recruiters scramble to find teachers to fill B.C. shortage

Shaughnessy Elementary School in Vancouver, B.C., September 28, 2017. Vancouver School Board has more job postings to hire new teachers than any other district in the province. Just this week, it posted 20 new positions that need to be filled, including two jobs at Shaughnessy Elementary for a full-time Grade 4/5 teacher plus a full-time kindergarten teacher and for two resource teachers at Sir James Douglas Elementary.Arlen Redekop
/ Vancouver Sun

Surrey DPAC chair Karen Tan with her children Zoe, 11, and Lucas, 9, outside their school, William Watson Elementary in Fleetwood. While Surrey and several other school boards have hired enough teachers to permanently fill their classrooms, many other districts in BC are still struggling to find enough teachers. Since Surrey is the largest district in the province, the DPAC was initially worried that not enough teachers could be found but Tan said local parents are now relieved.Jason Payne
/ Vancouver Sun

a) A lot, considering students are already one month into the school year.

b) Officially, 400, according to the number of postings on the B.C. Public School Employers’ website.

c) Far more than that, given that some postings are for multiple specialist positions and on-call teachers.

d) All of the above.

The correct answer is d. And the reason is as complicated as the start of this school year has been.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruling that reduced class sizes and required B.C. to hire 3,500 new teachers sparked unprecedented movement of teachers between education districts and a wave of new hires — which continues today.

“It’s challenging to pinpoint exact numbers, because the posting process right now is very fluid,” said Janet Stewart, chief administrative officer of the Public School Employers’ Association. “It’s quite a bit of a domino effect. So, to be looking at the posting numbers tells a more complex story.”

Stewart’s organization, which negotiates on behalf of school boards to get new teachers hired, said there are 400 postings for new teachers in B.C. right now. But each of those postings can represent multiple vacancies, and those vacancies can be for full-time, part-time or on-call work.

ON-CALL TEACHERS IN HIGH DEMAND

A Postmedia analysis of the postings on the website from early this week reveals vacancies for more than 900 full- or part-time jobs, in addition to 1,000 schools looking for on-call teachers.

Stewart said some of those postings are technically filled because in some cases the temporary teacher currently in the classroom will be officially hired once the paperwork is completed. In other cases, the person temporarily filling the role doesn’t want the job permanently so new teachers still need to be found — often in specialist roles.

Multiple school boards, including Burnaby, Coquitlam and the all-French Conseil Scolaire Francophone, have indicated multiple vacancies for bilingual teachers or librarians, which are always hard to find in B.C.

“We definitely have higher volumes this year and we definitely have pressure points around those highly specialized positions in particular,” Stewart said. “I’m hopeful it will calm down (this month).”

She also said that the data doesn’t mean 1,000 additional on-call teachers necessarily need to be hired in B.C., because schools share a pool of on-call teachers run by the district, and some work for multiple districts.

However, the need for on-call teachers is still high — board officials have said 60 more are needed in Surrey and 30 more in Prince George, and a teachers’ union in Vancouver says 400 are required in the city. At a Vancouver school board meeting Monday, officials acknowledged there is a “lack” of on-call teachers in Vancouver that requires “creative solutions.”

On average last year, Surrey was unable to fill 44 requests per day for an on-call teacher. Those spots are then typically covered by vice-principals, resource teachers or librarians. Last Monday, 34 requests for on-call teachers at Vancouver schools could not be met, said Katharine Shipley, president of the Vancouver Secondary Teachers’ Association.

When you take into consideration the jobs still unfilled and the on-call teachers that still need to be recruited, the number of hires still needed in B.C. is “likely close to 1,000,” said Glen Hansman, president of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.

“We are already seeing in the first couple of weeks of school, shortages and failures to fill (on-call teacher positions), and that is just going to be compounded when cold and flu season hits.”

Stewart said her organization is focusing its efforts on teacher on call lists, and noted B.C. can be attractive to substitute teachers from outside B.C. because the contracts here can allow for higher pay than in other provinces.

VANCOUVER NEEDS MOST NEW TEACHERS

When Postmedia analyzed the 400 official job postings at the start of last week, the Vancouver school board had by far the most, with 50. Since then, it has posted more than a dozen new positions, including two jobs at Shaughnessy Elementary for a full-time Grade 4/5 teacher plus one for a full-time kindergarten teacher.

The board refused to provide someone to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement said on Wednesday it had 42 unfilled jobs, “primarily a mixture of specialist and resource teaching positions that have been challenging to fill, plus some classroom positions, many of which have just become vacant because of leaves or resignations.”

It is typical for boards to hire throughout the school year, Superintendent John Lewis said in the statement, “but this year has been far more intensive as we have so many more positions to fill.”

There are classes in secondary schools in Vancouver that are being covered by a temporary teacher, but not necessarily one with expertise in the subject. “A calculus class that I know of, for the moment, has no teacher. There is a TOC (on-call teacher) in there, but the TOC doesn’t have that background to teach it, so they are minding the class,” Shipley said.

Vancouver recruited 50 teachers from other school districts but lost 125 who wanted to teach in another district, a trend that Lewis partly attributes to expensive real estate in Vancouver. Both the board and the Vancouver Secondary Teachers’ Association would like the B.C. Ministry of Education to consider some type of housing assistance for teachers in expensive urban areas.

RURAL DISTRICTS ALSO FEELING THE HEAT

The two other districts with the highest number of postings, as of Monday of last week, were Prince George and Chilliwack, both with 25.

In Prince George, Superintendent Marilyn Marquis-Forster said she has five full-time teachers to find, and the rest of the spots are in the midst of being filled with new hires.

“We are really optimistic that we will be fully staffed, as any school district ever is, following Thanksgiving,” she said.

Her district and many others have been recruiting in other provinces, such as Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland.

“We are perhaps in a new era in education in B.C. where we have to actively recruit outside B.C.,” Marquis-Forster said. “B.C. hasn’t produced enough new teachers in the last few years to fill this kind of explosion of opportunities.”

Eleven new teachers just arrived in Mackenzie, two hours north of Prince George, last week, said Joanne Hapke, president of the local teachers’ union. She added the district was making “herculean efforts” to fill these posts.

Recruiting for some of the more remote communities can take more work, and Marquis-Forster would like the provincial government to consider incentives, such as student loan forgiveness, for teachers in those areas.

The Chilliwack School District did not respond to an interview request. But Justine Hodge, chair of the district’s parent advisory council, said one school, G.W. Graham Secondary, still needs six new teachers, despite hiring 16 already.

She said the district has grown by more than 350 students, and is still waiting for 17 portables. Vedder Elementary, for example, needs four more portables, and in the meantime two classrooms are sharing the library, which has made it inaccessible to the rest of the students.

“Despite all of this, the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association has noticed positive changes in the classroom now that we have gone back to 2002 classroom size and composition language, and say that learning conditions have improved,” Hodge added.

OUT OF PROVINCE TEACHERS BEING RECRUITED

Stewart said her recruiters have had success bringing a large number of new teachers to B.C. by, for example, trying to woo potential teachers from areas with similar housing costs, such as young people accustomed to renting in Toronto who might be more willing to tolerate Vancouver’s high rent. Or by targeting those already living in rural areas who might be more willing to work in the north.

The teacher federation’s Hansman said the provincial government needs to support a “more robust recruitment strategy,” and is waiting for a response to the union’s suggestions that include eliminating the lowest salary levels, help with housing, and student loan forgiveness.

Education Minister Rob Fleming told Postmedia that schools must report their enrolment numbers on Sept. 30, and after that the ministry would consider options that have been raised by various advocates. Those include some of the strategies suggested by the teachers’ federation, as well as whether to increase a $2 million recruitment and retention fund for new teachers.

He noted discussions are already underway with B.C. university deans about producing more teachers, and in particular ones with needed specializations such as counselling, French and math.

Fleming argued that, ultimately, this is a good problem for B.C. to have — trying to hire as many teachers as it can after the Supreme Court ruled the previous Liberal government was wrong to rip class size and composition language out of the teachers’ collective agreement in 2002.

B.C.’s largest school district, Surrey, has hired the teachers it needs for its 5,000 classrooms, although some are still being moved into their final positions, said spokesman Doug Strachan. It is still looking for on-call teachers, and the jobs listing indicates Surrey is also in need of a few principals and counsellors.

Karen Tan, chair of the district parent advisory council, said Surrey parents are relieved that no more teachers are required for their children’s classrooms.

“Even though there were some hiccups at the beginning of the year, I think it’s being ironed out now,” said Tan, who has children in Grades 4 and 6. “We were a little bit concerned because we are such a big district, and it seems like smaller districts are having a hard time still.”

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